“Running the race” – Believe it or not I used to quite like running at one point, the feeling of increased fitness, the chance to sweat a little and the feeling you get when you know there is only a few yards left! What was weird was I used to like running up hill too, the challenge but also the joy when you get to the top and the accompanying feeling of accomplishment, ahh the days! The reason I mention all this is because we are running a race in Outside Light, a marathon, not a sprint, not a 100 metre dash, a long and rewarding marathon. It feels somewhat like we have just got to the top of the hill, it has been a hard slog these last few months, obstacles being faced, wind blowing, rain pouring up hill battle, but friends let yourselves hear us say this it is marvellous now at the top. We don’t kid ourselves that we have no more hills or even that running down them is easy but we want to look on and press on toward that prize. Can we encourage you to join us in pressing on, pressing in and seeking Christ, sweat on your brow keep running!

 

We have met recently as a team to bring clarity to our aims, to discuss pressing on, to strap up the trainers and to encourage each other to keep going. We are all so encouraged to be united in our aims as a team and an organisation and to remind ourselves of the vision we have. We broke it down as the following in order to help us remember it and pass it on to the teams and volunteers; LIGHT = L – Love in action, I – Inspiring churches, G – Gospel proclamation, H – Healing, T – Teamwork. Each member of the team is a light and that is what we would encourage all of us to represent, those 5 things when we are serving OL, this works out in outreach to the homeless, marginalised, youth, lost and many more!

 

Love in action is seeing us not just talk about our faith but putting it into action and showing people what Christ’s love is all about, we don’t want to be merley hearers of the word and so deceive ourselves we want to do something.

Inspiring churches is about seeing churches catch the vision to be going out into their communities, to be going to the lost rather than asking them to come, to be encouraging those people within church who want to do something but don’t know how. We want to inspire them as to the possibilities we have with God on our side!

Gospel proclaimation is about telling people about who Jesus is and why he came, telling people the good news that they can be rescued, we don’t want to be an organisation that is merely doing good things alone we want to be telling people why, we are not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God for salvation! We believe seeing God’s word demonstrated in word and deed is the perfect recipe.

Healing is about seeing God’s power working in peoples lives, seeing a demonstration of God’s power through prayer, this is our fuel, we want to be people who believe God for miracles, who seek him and point others to him.

Team work is about deep fellowship where we care about the people on our teams as well as those we meet, we believe we are in a battle together and we want to do all we can to support and encourage one another to reach our full potential for the glory of Christ. We love our volunteers, they are the real workers and we praise God for them!

 

So when we go OUTSIDE that is the LIGHT. We want to encourage all our groups to remind each other of these aims each time we go out on the street, open a drop in, work with the homeless, hold a barbecue….

 

We don’t pretend to have attained all this but we press on toward the prize for which Christ has already worked and attained. Thank you for your continued support, prayer and encouragement we so value it.